Even If It's Not My Fault, It's My Responsibility

I'm currently listening to Terry Pratchet's A Hat Full of Sky, the second book about aspiring witch Tiffany Aching and the tiny but fierce Nac Mac Feegle. I've not read nearly as much Pratchet as many of you fellow goblins, but one of the things I enjoy about him is the way he weaves humor and truths together. He's able to both be observant and do so from a skewed perspective. So there's nothing particularly unique or profound about the quotes that follow, but after listening to them in the car I felt the need to grab the book and reread them.

Witches didn't fear much, Miss Tick had said, but what the powerful ones were afraid of, even if they didn't talk about it, was what they called "going to the bad." It was too easy to slip into careless little cruelties because you had power and other people hadn't, too easy to think other people didn't matter much, too easy to think that ideas like right and wrong didn't apply to you. At the end of that road was you drooling and cackling to yourself all alone in a gingerbread house, growing warts on your nose.

A nicely succint description of the way privilege and power can corrupt, that.

Bits of Miss Tick's teachings floated through [Tiffany's] head: Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don't always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don't wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again.

The world would be a much better place if more people adopted that as their credo, "Even if it's not my fault, it's my responsibility."